Jared Remington got off to a hot start in the junior boys freestyle 175-pound bracket at the U.S. Marine Corps Junior Nationals earlier this month.
However, after a 2-0 start, his tournament was quickly over after two straight losses.
When the Greco-Roman portion of the tournament started, he dropped down a weight class and couldn’t be stopped.
The League City Clear Creek graduate went 6-0 and won the 165-pound championship on July 15 at the Fargodome in Fargo, North Dakota.
Vici Combat Sports posted on Instagram that Remington is the first Houston-area wrestler to make the national finals in Greco-Roman at Fargo.
“It has set in,” Remington said when asked if it feels like he won the title. “I was able to go back and watch it a lot. But when it happened, it was surreal. It was a very cool moment.”
He won a showdown of future Division 1 wrestlers in the finals. Facing Northern Iowa signee Cael Gilmore from Marengo, Ohio, Remington won 5-3. The Cal State-Bakersfield signee trailed 1-0 early before taking a 2-1 lead late in the first period.
He said once he went up 5-1 with 55 seconds left, he knew he had won it. Gilmore scored two with a second left to make it look closer than it was.
Remington finished with back-to-back medals at Fargo, taking fourth last year. He went to North Dakota to compete the last five years.
He said getting fourth last year set the tone for this year’s success.
“I knew I wanted to come back and my goal was to win it … I just wanted to do this,” Remington said. “The goal was to ultimately just try to do my best to win it and kind of go out with a bang like I did.”
He had a variety of wins on the way to the title.
Remington secured an 8-0 tech fall over Joseph Stimac of Wisconsin. In the round of 32, Remington pinned Jance Novake of Washington in 1:49.
He made the quarterfinals with a 12-9 win over Jozeph Valenuezla Smith from Arizona, outscoring him 6-3 in the final period. Remington won by a 16-8 tech fall over Aiden Arnett of Illinois in the quarterfinals.
A 5-3 decision over Thunder Page from Kansas followed in the semifinals, a match he said was tough because of the amount of hand fighting needed to take control.
“All of day two matches were close,” he said. “They were all good wrestlers. I mean, winning is some sort of luck, right? So being able to get through all of day two. There were some bumps, but I was able to come through everything and still get on the other side of it, so it was really good.”
Remington said the decision to drop from 175 to 165 was made with his brother, Keith.
Both wrestled in the freestyle portion, but his brother dropped down from 165 to 157. That allowed Jared to drop from 175 to 165.
For Keith, the move led to a 3-0 start in Greco before falling in the consolation round of 16.
“I didn’t have the performance I wanted in freestyle and neither did he, so we talked about it and both decided to do it,” he said. “It worked out pretty well.”
Jared Remington was a three-time state medalist for Clear Creek. He was a state champion this year, after being a runner-up in 2025 and fourth in 2024.
“The state final this past year, I wasn’t too nervous,” Remington said. “It kind of was more of a job. I knew I had to go do it.”
The feeling at Fargo had some similarities and differences.
“It was similar, I would say, but it doesn’t compare at all (to Fargo),” he said. “You’re able to go on a stage in front of the whole nation. This felt more like a privilege. It was something really cool being able to get to do it at all. So there were nerves, of course, but it was more excitement than nerves of performing. I was ready to go out there and just do my best.”
